Losing Faith by Adam Mitzner

Published by Gallery Books on April 14, 2015

Aaron Littman heads a high powered New York law firm. He is surprised when he is asked to take on the criminal defense of Nicolai Garkov, who is charged with securities and bank fraud and suspected of terrorism. Garkov's trial, just a month away, has been reassigned to Judge Faith Nichols. Neither Littman nor Nichols want anything to do with Garkov's case, but Garkov knows how to get what he wants. Littman finds himself with a Hobson's choice: refuse Garkov and lose his career or do Garkov's bidding and risk losing much more.

What begins as a simple blackmail story takes an ominous turn about a third of the way through the novel and an even sharper turn at the midway point. Losing Faith addresses a murder accusation, the usual focus of courtroom dramas, and challenges the reader to guess who committed the murder. It does those things quite well.

Losing Faith paints a bleak but accurate picture of life for lawyers in large corporate firms ... if you can call it a life. Adam Mitzner is spot on about the willingness (indeed, eagerness) of large corporate law firms to put profits ahead of principles. The novel's political dynamics (Faith has a shot at a Supreme Court nomination but only if Garkov is convicted and sentenced to the max) reflect a jaded view, but it is also a realistic view of how the career path of a judge is influenced by politics and grandstanding more than the judge's fidelity to the law.

The novel also offers bleak but accurate insights into how the criminal justice system railroads innocent people. It includes a fair amount of the "inside baseball" that makes a courtroom drama credible, all of it presented from a knowledgeable perspective. It accurately depicts how prosecutors can use the immense power of the government to coerce witnesses into giving testimony that will help secure a conviction. Not that, by the novel's end, the defense lawyers come across as any more ethical than the prosecutors. Most courtroom dramas paint either prosecutors or defense attorneys as knights in shining armor, but Losing Faith exposes the ugly truth that in many instances, both sides care only about winning and are willing to sacrifice their integrity to achieve that goal.

The courtroom scenes are riveting and the underlying mystery is a good one. My only significant objection is that the murder accusation is based on evidence that is not only circumstantial but weak -- so weak that I doubt a prosecutor would have based an indictment on it. While the story depends upon readers believing the government had a strong case, the prosecution's case seemed quite doubtful to me. That's a small complaint, however, and one that did not impair my overall enjoyment of the story.

If the reveal of the murderer at the novel's end is not entirely unexpected, Losing Faith has the virtue of being a novel that never overreaches. Too many courtroom dramas (and mysteries in general) rely on preposterous endings to achieve the element of surprise, but Losing Faith never produces an eye-rolling moment. While not quite on the level of Presumed Innocent (still the gold standard of courtroom dramas), Losing Faith tells a credible, satisfying, attention-grabbing story with flawed (and thus realistic) characters who are nevertheless sympathetic.

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